Always
by Lirazel
Summary: Do you feel seventeen? the hero asks. I don’t feel seventeen, the princess says. Well, me neither, the knight allows. They have always been who they are. PostHBP oneshot.


Always

_Inspired by one of my favorite pieces of dialogue from any movie ever: that scene in_ Friday Night Lights _when Mike, Don, and Brian are out shooting. Tore my heart out. I understood._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters herein, nor do I own _Friday Night Lights_ or the bit of dialogue I blatantly stole for this fic. Don't sue, please._

_--------------------- _

The three sit on the roof. The air is still, too still, and hotter than they can ever remember it being. There's a storm building, one that has been brewing for sixteen years, and they all know it. And they don't speak, because after all these years of working and laughing and fighting and crying and sitting together, they don't need to. They're practically one person, anyway, extensions of each other, as though the lines that distinguish them from each other have blurred almost into nonexistence. That would bother some people; some people would hate to not be thought of as individuals, but as a unit. But they don't mind. This is the way it's always been, and this is their only comfort now.

The princess scoots a little closer to the knight, and his arm absently goes around her shoulder. Their legs dangle over the edge of the balustrade, and she sighs.

The hero leans his head back against the wall behind him and tries not to think, but only to be. It's easiest now.

"We should lighten up," the knight says. "Play Quidditch or chess. Go for a swim. Laugh. At something. We're seventeen."

"Do you feel seventeen?" the hero asks.

"I don't feel seventeen," the princess says.

"Well, me neither," the knight allows.

The hero says nothing, but all three know he doesn't need to. None of them have ever—ever—felt their age.

-----

Even as a child, he was loyal. When his mum told him to watch after Ginny, he made certain that the twins didn't tease her, pulling her hair and making her cry, and that Percy didn't try to straighten her dress, making her squirm in discomfort. When Bill rolled his eyes about how old and worn his stuffed dragon was, the eye fallen off, the tail patched more than once, the green faded to grey, and told the younger boy that he needed a new toy, he crossed his arms, screwed up his face, and announced that he didn't need a new friend: Fafnir was good enough for him.

It was easier then.

He discovered Quidditch when he was six, tagging after his brothers out to the ragged, homemade pitch, watching with joy and eagerness until the day when they decided he was old enough to learn to fly. He decided that his team was the Cannons, because orange was his favorite color. Charlie laughed at him because everyone knew that the Cannons hadn't won a game in almost a century and weren't likely to in the near future. But he had made his decision, and he would never waver, no matter how unworthy the object of his devotion.

It was clearer then.

He was ashamed, perhaps, of his large family and their ragged robes, but he entered into many a scuffle in the nearby Muggle village when the other boys taunted the twins' jokes or his sister's freckles.

It was simpler then.

----

Even as a child, she was clever. She would line up her stuffed animals on the side of her bed, in order, from biggest to smallest. Every cup and creamer in her tea set was returned to its niche in the wicker basket when she was done playing. She knew that everything had a place, a way that things should be, that the world should be made up of patterns, and she made it her job to discover those patterns and set the world in order.

It was easier then.

She learned to read when she was four, and she discovered a whole world of order: small black letters, even and solemn, marching in file across a milky-white page. Tall, proud volumes of bound leather arranged in a fascinating system that she couldn't quite understand, both in her parent's living room and in the library. She devoured them, but always reverently, with a hint of awe around the edges. Here was a universe of facts and stories and truths that let her know what her next step should be.

It was clearer then.

She would read to her dolls, very seriously and solemnly, though she enjoyed it. Her dolls were an appreciative audience, faces always smiling no matter how dull her tome of choice might be.

It was simpler then.

----

Even as a child, he was made for more. Sometimes he could feel the air tingling like a storm was coming, but the sky was empty of cloud and feeling, a deep serene blue that unsettled him even then, because he knew he should feel like that, and didn't. There was something there, even if his eyes couldn't see it, and this had nothing to do with his glasses. He caught glimpses, flashes of green and gold, just beyond the corner of his eye, and though he knew he'd never be able to turn fast enough to see them, that didn't stop him from trying.

It was easier then.

He knew for certain that he was different when he was seven, though he'd suspected it before then. He vaguely suspected that every child—every person, really—thinks that they are—wants to be—different. If he voiced his differentness, he knew that others would laugh and say that he's just like everybody else. But somehow he knew that he was more. And now there was evidence. Because he was mad—mad at being thrust once more into his cabinet—and suddenly every single light in the house went out. And he knew, even at seven, that when other children are mad and throw fits, the lights don't go out just because you wanted them to.

It was clearer then.

The glass was there, and then it wasn't. And he was talking to a snake. And somehow he wasn't surprised in the least. Things like this happen to him, and he was not surprised—has never been surprised. He had a purpose, a destiny, perhaps, though that word might have been too grandiose. Except that it wasn't.

It was simpler then.

----

Perhaps—perhaps their bodies are seventeen, though the princess has a pain in her knee when it rains and the knight's back aches when he lays down at night and the hero sometimes feels that he's about to come apart at the seams.

But none of that matters anyways, because their souls are old—so very, very old. Older than the stones that they sit on, older than the forest that stretches out before their eyes, older than the mountains that scrape the distant sky. They're so old that they've left common ways of measurement, like age, far behind, and they simply are who they are.

Who they've always been.

----

They sit on the roof, for just a moment, a heartbeat in the endlessness that is their lives. But the moment is perfect unto itself and while they are in it, it seems to last forever.

And when the clouds explode into a torrent of roiling black and lashing rain and viridian lightning and the wind rips buy and the cries split the air and the moment is over, they rise as one, and do what they were always meant to do, the thing that no seventeen-year-olds should ever be asked to do: what his loyalty and her cleverness and his _more_—their gifts and their curses—were given to them in the beginning for.

They fight.


End file.
